


Above Cardiff

by gwendolyncooper



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Cute space facts, F/M, Fluff, I just needed the cute, Undead Owen Harper, s2, self-indulgence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:54:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24746410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendolyncooper/pseuds/gwendolyncooper
Summary: Tosh and Owen are new to their relationship, and both of them seem to see themselves a little bit differently than their partner does.Thanks to cxptained for all the cute space facts and also for giving me all the lovely Towen emotions.
Relationships: Owen Harper/Toshiko Sato, Towen
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	Above Cardiff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cxptained](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cxptained/gifts).



It’s quiet above Cardiff.  
  
It’s late. Late enough that even the city has started to settle, late enough that the sounds of life have begun to calm, and the busy streets have a muffled blanket of distance over them. The Rift is quiet tonight — as if all of the universe has come together to allow this one moment of calm for the two figures seated alone, high above the warm street lights and the ever-present fog of the Welsh city.  
  
No one is allowed on the roof, but the building manager makes an exception for the small Japanese woman who lives so quietly amongst other tenants. She never plays loud music or has parties, and she rarely has anyone over. She smiles and periodically brings him the latest attempt at a new pastry (they’re never brilliant, but they’re not bad, either). So when she slips past him in the hall, towing the man who’s becoming a regular sight around the place towards the “locked” door at the end of the hall, the manager turns a blind eye. She won’t cause issues.  
  
And indeed, she won’t — the door is opened quick as a wink and with the man she loves close behind, Toshiko Sato slips out into the cool night air. She’s loaded Owen’s arms up with blankets and she herself is carrying a basket of snacks and a bottle of wine. It’s quiet between them as they lay out a covering on the concrete surface of the roof and settle, only the sounds of their breathing and shuffling audible in the crisp air. The pop of a cork. The trickling of wine into glasses, and then the crystal-clear _tink_ of said glasses meeting.  
  
It’s quiet above Cardiff.  
  
There’s a place against the doctor’s side that is created, as it would seem to the technological genius, for her. Toshiko fits perfectly against his ribs, and when he leans to the side, his weight placed on the palm pressed flat against the blanket, his arm sits against her back as a support, strong and steady and present with her, in this moment.  
It’s become far from uncommon to share these quiet moments with him, but she finds a surprised contentment settles into her heart each time. There had been a point when she had settled for loving him from afar for the rest of time — seeing him when no one else did, in those moments he thought himself alone and allowed himself to crack. Fighting past his cynicism and anger to the hurt that lay within. For a long, long time, she had expected to be the only one giving. But she was wrong to assume she ever _had_ been, now hadn’t she? He’d always given in return, in the ways he could and the methods he knew how. The way he’d soften with her when she spoke about something that excited her. The piercing way his brown eyes saw right through her, every time, noted every blush and stutter and how she tried too hard. The quiet comfort of companionship offered, when he let her speak until she had no words. For a long time, she thought he tuned her out. Now, she knows he has always heard her, even when he didn’t want to.  
Toshiko Sato sees Owen Harper. And Owen Harper sees Toshiko Sato.  
  
It’s quiet above Cardiff.

  
◤━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◥

  
“It’s beautiful up here.”  
  
Her voice doesn’t break the silence so much as nudge it gently aside, shifting it for a moment to speak. Owen looks up from where he’s been staring at the glass of wine in his hand. He won’t drink it; can’t. But they’ve found something of a sense of normalcy in the process of pouring two instead of one — or rather, he does it for Toshiko. She worries too much, doesn’t she? Second-guessing what he needs and what he doesn’t in an endless circle until she’s worked herself into a state of uncertainty that feeds into him. The _last_ thing he wants is for her to feel anxious around him because he’s dead; he does that enough for the both of them. It’s an ever-present weight in his mind, a constant in the background. As she leans into him, he wonders if he’s too cold for her. There’s no body heat to him, and he hasn’t had the time to throw his jacket or the blankets into the tumble dryer to simulate that warmth. He assumes she ignores it for him, really, the way she ignores that he simply holds the wine glass in his hand rather than lifting it to his lips. It’s not pretty what happens if he forgets not to partake.  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” He’s speaking too loudly into the quiet, he thinks, and he lowers his tone to match her soft voice. She’s in one of those states, isn’t she? Where the world is brilliant and perfect and beautiful for a moment, in a way only Toshiko can see. She’s always like this; drawing maps and lines and patterns in her head, working on numbers and equations that most can’t even begin to dream up. It’s second nature to her. It’s beautiful. He wishes he could see it, just for a moment, like she does.  
  
“We’ll be able to see Venus at some point later this year, you know.” The suggestion of a smile quirks just the corner of his lips. He knows that when she says ‘ _at some point_ ’, she means she knows the exact time and date, but she won’t say it out loud. Tosh loves to show off her brain, but she downplays it more often than not.  
  
“Will we? Can’t see it now?”  
  
“Not at the moment.” She settles closer against him, and there’s a slight relief in the thought that he isn’t so cold as to be off-putting. “You know, Venus is considered to be the most beautiful planet, but it’s not. There’s craters and pits all over the surface. We just think the clouds around it are beautiful.”  
  
He could say something in that quiet beat, but instead he keeps his mouth shut. She wants to talk about it, to spill all the knowledge she holds inside her head, to pour it out like a tap with a broken handle, he knows. So he lets the silence stretch between them, for a long moment.  
  
It’s quiet above Cardiff.  
  
“That’s why we can see it so brightly in the sky. It’s the clouds reflecting the light of the sun. It looks like the brightest star in the sky when it’s here, you won’t be able to miss it.” There’s a pause; she’s gone quiet again. He glances down at her, finds her dark gaze steady on him, and that hint of a smile becomes something real now, soft and encouraging.  
  
  
“Yeah?” He doesn’t have to force his voice to be soft now. “If it’s got craters, is there a Man on Venus, then?”  
It’s a nonsense question, hardly thought through before he asks it, but it’s enough to set her off again, so it does its job. He settles in closer now, allowing the full wine glass to sit to the side on the blanket, forgotten, as he watches her eyes lift to the sky and her free hand find the moon.  
  
“No, nothing like that. But the Man in the Moon, you know, isn’t always _seen_ as the man in the moon. In a lot of Asian cultures, it’s seen more like a rabbit. You know, the Chinese are starting construction on a roving spacecraft that they’re sending up there. Nothing official, obviously, but I know about it.” Owen attempts to suppress the fond chuckle, but he can’t quite help it.  
“Of course you do.”  
“But they’re naming it Yutu.” She’s speaking over him now, and it’s good. She’s comfortable and off on a tangent, and he can sit there with her and say nothing. He can just listen to her. See the world through her brain for a moment. His own can calm, leave the constant rift of anxiety within alone. He can lose himself in her mind, in her voice, in the brilliance he sees in her, always has seen.  
  
It’s quiet above Cardiff.  
  
◤━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━◥  
  


“In Chinese belief, Yutu is the name of the pet rabbit who belonged to the Moon Goddess, Chang’e.” There’s a certain comfort that comes to the genius when she speaks of things like this — the knowledge she crams into her brain with a ravenous need so often goes unspoken, unshared. There’s no point in it if it isn’t useful or shared, is there? She worries, at times, that Owen grows tired of it. Of the rambling, the constant need to be acknowledged as _brilliant._ She is — she’s _so_ smart, and it’s what makes her useful. She needs people to see it. So given the chance, she’ll tell them. She’s grateful for the indulgence he gives her — the soft prompts that set her off on endless spirals. It’s how she knows he loves her. Maybe not all of the annoying parts of her, but he’s willing to deal with them for her.  
  
“It’ll be launched in…oh, five or six years. The current timeline is four, but you know how these things go.” Is that pretentious? She isn’t certain. But for the moment, she allows it, and moves on. “A lot of things up there are named after mythology and religion — obviously, all the planets are, but their moons, too! Mars is the Roman God of War, and the two moons are named Phobos and Deimos. In English, that’s Panic and Terror, but in reality, it’s the names of his two sons. Phobos is where we get the word _phobia_ from. They were the two different types of fear, it makes sense when you’re talking about the God of War.”  
  
“It does, yeah.”  
  
His response is quiet, hardly there, and she feels a slight easing of the worry in her chest. She knows that tone — he’s relaxed, at the very least, and if she’s helped that in any way, then it’s good for her. She’ll ramble forever about it, if it continues to help him. She sees the anxiety, the worry that gnaws away at him day after day, the uncertainty in his own choices and existence. She couldn’t wish for anyone different. Never has, dead or alive. It’s him. It’s simply _Owen Harper_ that she wants, and to know that in any way he wants _her_ in return is enough. She never thought it would be like this, in the end. Mutual. Together. On a rooftop, wrapped in blankets and looking at the stars. She pauses for breath, and their eyes meet for a moment. She smiles; he smiles. She looks back at the sky.  
  
It’s quiet above Cardiff.  
  
“If you think about it,” she begins again, more slowly this time. He’s still looking at her with such intensity that she feels her heart begin to pick up its pace. It’s stupid, to still have this schoolgirl crush on him when they’re _in love,_ but here she is. He seems so…at home, here, on a rooftop they aren’t allowed on. She feels the same, in the end. “…humans are just…insane. We look at the sky and the stars and the planets and we say we have to go there. And to go there takes so much work and effort and everything has to be _so precise._ If you take off one thousandth of a degree off, you’ll miss the moon by _miles._ If you make _one_ wrong calculation, if you strip a screw or you misplace a wire or you miss sealing the _tiniest_ bit of a space suit, you die. Things explode. You get lost in the endless vacuum of space. No _wonder_ we name planets after gods and moons after fear, it’s _terrifying._ Every bit of it. And most people, they don’t even _know_ about aliens. But it’s humanity, it’s us, it’s the _human race,_ and we can’t stop. We can’t stop looking upward, going farther, trying _harder,_ even after a thousand mistakes. We know the risk and that just makes us want it _more._ ” She pauses, and she doesn’t know if she’s breathless from the thrill of the _yearning_ that comes with these thoughts or the fact that she’s only now pausing for breath. Her eyes remain trained on the sky, seeking it, desperately searching its depths. “Everyone on this planet knows there’s more than us, aliens or not. And we can’t help but want it.”

When she looks back at him, she smiles more widely. And he smiles back at her. Owen doesn’t think about whether or not he’s too cold for her, or too cynical. Toshiko doesn’t think about the fact that maybe she’s too arrogant, or too annoying. For a moment, there’s simply two of them, under the moonlight. They both look up to the stars.

It’s quiet above Cardiff.


End file.
